(ZNR) spoiler free sanctuary

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Ginuqu
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Post by Ginuqu » 3 years ago

I'm not sure this is a popular way to go about things, but I want to start a chat thread for people who have no intention of reading any early spoilers, whether they're leaks or official previews. With the set boosters debuting here I want to retain as much thrill as possible for when I open them, which means averting my eyes from everything, no matter whether it's big, like a preview image, or small, like a thread containing a possible new card title. My plan is to bookmark this thread and my "involved topics" button and not look anywhere else on this site until I receive all my packs!

Let's chat and speculate with innocence. Please don't pop in and tell us whether we're right or wrong about our guesses!
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Ginuqu
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Post by Ginuqu » 3 years ago

I suppose I'll go first!

Given that the word "adventure" is in the Zendikar tagline I'm hoping to see more creatures with adventures attached to them. They're my favourite thing in Eldraine, and my favourite card idea in general for years. It'd be fun to see legendaries with simple adventures this time. that's my main wish!

I don't have many cards from the previous two Zendikar blocks in my collection, but from what I do remember about them I'd be least interested in seeing more Ally mechanics, and most interested in seeing Surge. That's an ability that got buried by splashier gimmicks. More vampire tribal is inevitable and something I have nothing much to say about. Landfall and Awaken were both wonderful and I suspect they'll find a way to combine them or reference their existence in other oblique ways. Traps were also beautiful and it'd be fun to see the current creative approach to almost free spells. Maybe "If (opponent has fulfilled this condition) OR (you have fulfilled this card's Surge condition) you may play it for this cost"? Too meta?
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I could happily never see another Kor card again but given that it's been almost impossible to avoid learning that Nahiri is in this set, I get the feeling we'll be seeing them anyway.
I tend not to be interested in what gets reprinted, but the single card I most want to see reprinted in this set is City of Brass. I've been getting hooked on watching people play MTG Arena and the game cries out for a good 5C land. City of Brass is a cardname you could fit into all types of settings and I bet everyone would get excited for its presence.
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

I suspect it may be a bit early for the Adventure type to return, as it only premiered this year. However, there is a chance that WotC were so sure that the mechanic would be a success (and it was a huge one to be fair, adventures are hella fun) that they decides to use it again already.

I think that it is more likely that we will be getting a return of the "quest" enchantments. I.e. enchantments in which you do some action or fulfill some condition to charge them up to achieve some effect, it was one of the more popular aspects of the original setting after all. Traps are also a possibility as they were fairly popular as well. One returning Zendikar mechanic we can be almost certain of however is Landfall, particularly given both how open ended the mechanic is and just how insanely popular it is.

As for the Kor, we will inevitably see a few of them in the set, as they are one of the species native to the plane.

Finally, City of Brass will not happen in the Zendikar set, it doesn't make sense, particularly considering it is tied to the planes of Wildfire and Rabiah, and the few permanent larger settlements that exist on Zendikar are already named. That said, I would not be surprised if we got a 5C land in the set, but City of Brass wouldn't be it.
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Post by Ginuqu » 3 years ago

Good points. Not so certain about your judgment on City of Brass, though - previous versions of the cards have ties to other planes, but the NAME is generic and a new capital might have cropped up since we last visited Zendikar, right?

On the quest enchantments, I have to admit I forgot all about them. Always thought the black one from Zendikar was broken, and Quest for Renewal was suspicious, but I never remember them as cycles or major themes of those sets. They must have slipped me by and I'm not really fond of them much.

Bloodchief Ascension's the one I mean, absurd reach for one mana.
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

Ginuqu wrote:
3 years ago
Good points. Not so certain about your judgment on City of Brass, though - previous versions of the cards have ties to other planes, but the NAME is generic and a new capital might have cropped up since we last visited Zendikar, right?
While the name of City of Brass is fairly generic, there is still the issue of the roil on Zendikar, which makes permanent settlements of any size extremely rare. The only major one that had lasted for some time on the plane was Seagate, and we all know what happened to that.

Bloodchief Ascension is not really that powerful compared to other aristocrats style effects, it's about on par for other rare ones of those. The green one that gives all your creatures +5/+5 and the white one that produce an obscene amount of Angel tokens are much, much more overpowered.

But that said, I would not mind some new ones as they are pretty fun to play around with, and a few reprints of some of them, particularly the common green one that is a landfetch spell, would be appreciated.
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Post by Ginuqu » 3 years ago

Having real trouble avoiding spoilers. I already know several card names I didn't want to know, although so far they've been generic and draft-commonesque so nothing huge has slipped through the net. I still don't know what mechanics are in the set or if there's bad guys and so forth. It basically means I can't watch MTG streams, though, since everyone cedes to their chat and goes to look at scryfall or what have you sooner or later.

A thought did occur to me that they could make Slivers to complement the Modern Horizons ones which were fairly creative but make every sliver ability contingent on an old Zendikar mechanic like Landfall or Trap! in my mind's eye there's an oldschool Tempest-style sliver but with a hedron face
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

I don't think we should expect slivers on Zendikar as there is no precedent for them existing there. But they were the inspiration for the allies.

That said, Slivers with various Zendikari mechanics would be pretty cool. Except Annihilator, a sliver with annihilator would really, really, truly, suck.

One reprint I hope they do is Expedition Map, it fits the flavor of the plane so well.
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Post by Ginuqu » 3 years ago

It's all over, I accidentally found out
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about the flip/transform/effect land (I haven't seen an actual card but I saw two people discussing Zendikar Rising and too much of it entered my head before I realized I should close the window.)
I wasn't even hanging in a Magic-related channel when I found out, I was just in a general chat. Avoiding this stuff is so hard. I always find it a weird part of the advertising method that you give away exactly what's in your sealed product and everyone's meant to be into that. I get that it creates hype, and then creates more knock-on hype when people write speculative articles about the new standard, or new Commanders, or whatever, but it just makes every site unreadable if you don't want to know.
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They should make a flip land that becomes Adventurers' Guildhouse. Hah
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

That second spoiler is pretty hilarious considering where the mechanic lies on the storm scale
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It's an 11, btw.
I don't even try to avoid spoilers once spoiler season has officially started anymore, I just don't see the point. But I respect people's choices regarding the matter, so that I don't generally discuss it outside of threads dedicated to said spoilers.

It's like with movies, until its been out for a while its best to be cautious with spoilers.
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Post by Ginuqu » 3 years ago

The M:TG coverage was impossible to watch, in more ways than one:

- spoilers popping up between rounds
- repeated interview stuff
- unnecessarily clinging to the Swiss system in a small tournament where the leaderboard is short enough to be immediately understood, They could switch to something more dynamic and cut out the useless half-hour waits between rounds by having rolling matches and more than one feed. Decentralize, baby!
- the last day literally not being broadcast didn't help

anyway,
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I managed to learn about the adventuring party system by looking at the screen at the wrong time. I still haven't memorized a single card from the set but I feel like I can assemble a lot of obvious cards in my imagination just by dwelling on what I know about the mechanics. That's kind of irritating, I was hoping to open my cards completely unaware of what's coming and now I have a gestalt idea. Also I gather the entire set has been revealed and it's still two weeks until I'll actually get my paws on them.
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

Ginuqu wrote:
3 years ago
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I managed to learn about the adventuring party system by looking at the screen at the wrong time. I still haven't memorized a single card from the set but I feel like I can assemble a lot of obvious cards in my imagination just by dwelling on what I know about the mechanics. That's kind of irritating, I was hoping to open my cards completely unaware of what's coming and now I have a gestalt idea. Also I gather the entire set has been revealed and it's still two weeks until I'll actually get my paws on them.
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It's a pretty nifty use of the batching tool though, it really shows how flexible it is when viewed in contrast with Historic.
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Post by Ginuqu » 3 years ago

Okay, I'm coming out of my cocoon. Just opened a card called
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Agadeem's Awakening
and it virtually made my eyes cross, both in terms of ability and in terms of "from now on, how the hell am I meant to build decks properly?" <3
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

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Simple, count them as spells, not land. Only count the double sided lands as lands for deck building, the spells/creatures should be treated as spells/creatures and the land side ignored. It's just a bonus if you are in need of a land drop.
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